Mayo boss James Horan says ‘it’s not the end of the world’ after the Westerners were relegated from the top flight of the National Football League for the first time in 23 years yesterday.
“It was disappointing to lose the game,” he admitted. “Mayo have been on the edge for a number of years and fell the right side of it. It didn’t fall for us today but we put ourselves under pressure after the first number of games in the League.
“We didn’t play well, we didn’t play well at all.
“If you look at the last two games, there’s a lot of good stuff there,” he continued. “So we’ll build on that, but whatever league it is next, it is not the end of the world whatsoever.
“It doesn’t impact on the 2020 championship, that’s for sure. We’ll be looking forward to Tuesday night and getting back on the road.”
Last year’s league winners take on Leitrim in the Connacht Championship next Sunday.
Meanwhile, Mickey Harte was delighted to see his side retain their place in Division 1 ahead of their do-or-die Ulster championship clash with Donegal next Sunday.
“We deserved the two points today,” said the veteran Tyrone coach.
“We made great use of the breeze in the first half and that left us in a comfortable position, but knowing the strength of the breeze we knew it was going to be a different story in the second half.
“We knew that it was going to be a fight to the end which it was and that is what it turned out to be,” he continued. “Small margins make the difference here and things could have gone the other way.
“We are happy that we survived because Division One is the place we want to be.”
“It’s been that kind of season for us, win one, lose one, win one, lose one and I don’t like the sequence, don’t want it to continue next week we have to change something, we have to get a bit of consistency if we want to stay alive this season.”
